When they anointed the five-year-old Duleep Singh as Maharaja of Punjab on 18 September 1843, the nobles of the durbar hoped they had found a puppet king to do their bidding. None of them could have guessed that the twenty-six-year-old Jindan, ill-educated, with no aristocratic family behind her, might have other plans. The kennel keeper’s daughter scandalized the court by leaving the purdah of the women’s quarters and declaring that she would govern Punjab herself in her boy’s name.
